Salzburg Festival (3) - Zagorinskaja/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling - Cerha, Kurtág, and Webern, 6 August 2016

Kollegienkirche, Salzburg

 

Cerha – Les Adieux (Elegie) (2005, rev. 2007)

Kurtág – Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova, op.17 (1981)

Webern – Six Orchestral Pieces, op.6 (1909, rev. for chamber ensemble, 1920)

Cerha – Bruchstück, geträumt (2009)

Natalia Zagorinskaya (soprano)

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

 

The Salzburg Festival here paid tribute, in Fischer von Erlach’s Kollegienkirche, to Friedrich Cerha and György Kurtág in their ninetieth birthday years. We heard two relatively recent works by the Austrian composer, alongside acknowledged masterpieces by Kurtág and Anton Webern: the ‘threshold’, as Pierre Boulez once put it, for music of the second half of the twentieth century – and beyond.

 

Les Adieux (Elegie) was the first of the Cerha works. Its extremity might have sounded post-Webern, but the language owed at least as much, perhaps more, to Berg. At any rate, one was made to listen, in a compelling performance from Klangforum Wien and Sylvain Cambreling. It was a performance between as well as of the notes. Fragmentary melodies, sometimes melodies rather more than fragmentary, whether taking their ordering principles from pitch or from colour, insinuated themselves. Woodwind lines at times took on an arabesque quality. There were some extraordinary chords, ‘in themselves’: both their harmony, and their spacing: like Bruckner, perhaps, in a way, but in a – mercifully – more compact time-frame.

 

Kurtág’s Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova has been with us now for thirty-five years, since its 1981 premiere in Paris, conducted by Boulez. For all the obvious, indeed wondrous, influence of and reaction to Webern – perhaps ‘Webern precedent’ would be better – there was, I thought, also more than a hint of Berg again, especially Lulu, and especially in the vocal line, here delivered and interpreted with authority and imagination by Natalia Zagorinskaya. Perhaps the Schoenberg of Pierrot lunaire too? What a splendid pairing that would make for a concert! At any rate, there was on occasion a hint, never overdone, of cabaret to the proceedings. The dialectical relationship between these twenty-one miniatures, the three parts, and the whole (again, how could one not think of Pierrot?) manifested itself in performance through the surprise of the moment and concern, not least from Cambreling, for the longer line. The virtuosity of Kurtág’s writing was relished by all concerned, as, I thought, was the feminine-feminist standpoint almost forced upon the composer, which is not necessarily to say unwillingly, by Rimma Dalos’s verse. The opening of the second part, ‘Something erotic’, sounded as if it were bathed in ever-transforming moonlight. What a panoply of colours, all silver, yet never quite silver, we heard: it was luminous, angry, frenetic, calm, all with a well-nigh Mozartian profusion of melody.

 

It was fascinating to hear Webern’s op.6 Six Pieces in this context, and in their 1920 chamber ensemble arrangement: not least for what the arrangement told us about what Webern thought about his instrumental lines. The first piece was admirably long-breathed, with a splendidly post-Mahlerian violin solo. The second, ‘Bewegt’, perhaps sounded more similar to its predecessor than it would usually do – at least until it did not. I was put in mind of the ‘obligate Rezitativ’ from Schoenberg’s op.16 Pieces. Viola and harmonica offered a beguiling opening to the third. The Funeral March sounded more transformed than any of its companion pieces, and yet retained its character; it overwhelmed, if anything, even more than it would with full orchestra. Drum rolls, an exquisite, desperate clarinet solo, a harmonium whose sound, not unlike an 8 ft Choir organ stop, suggested something of the acoustic as a whole. Both the fifth and sixth pieces were properly imbued with aftershock. Reconstruction and lament in the latter, crowned by, or submerged, in bells, had me hear the entire work anew.

 

Finally, we heard Cerha’s Bruchstück, geträumt. Opening high violin and viola harmonics had me think of Mahler’s First Symphony, although with no tonality – at least yet – implied. As other instruments joined this dream-landscape, a fuller harmonic spectrum emerged: especially interesting to hear after Webern’s Pieces. Berg, too, once again came to mind, and not just, I think, because of Cerha’s Lulu completion. Indeed, I genuinely thought of Berg first and the completion second in this case. There was a persistent sense of unfolding, both for work and performance: development, if you like, and more Mahler than Bruckner. Climaxes were unerringly well-placed. The intriguing antiphonal counterpoint between harp and plucked piano strings made its point in – yes, dreamlike fashion. If I were less sure about the final resolution, I should happily give the work another hearing.

 

Ensemble Modern - Cerha, Petraškevičs, Schöllhorn, and Schoenberg, 10 October 2014

Wigmore Hall

Cerha – Acht Sätze nach Hölderlin-Fragmenten

Jānis Petraškevičs – gefährlich dünn (world premiere)

Johannes Schöllhorn – sous-bois (world premiere)

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, op.4 

Jagdish Mystry, Giorgos Panagiotidis, Corinna Canzian, Diego Ramos Rodriguez (violins)

Megumi Kasakawa, Patrick Jüdt (viola)

Eva Böcker, Michael M. Kasper (cello)

The Ensemble Modern is an organisation to which we all owe a great debt. Rehearsing an average of seventy new works every year, twenty of which are world premieres, it involves itself in orchestral, ensemble, and chamber concerts, theatre works, dance and video projects. This Wigmore Hall concert fell into the chamber category, although, with eight players in Janis Petraškevičs’s gefährlich dünn, for double string quartet, it was not so distant from the disputed border with ‘ensemble’ territory. The other works were all for string sextet, concluding in what, Brahms notwithstanding, is surely now the most celebrated of all essays in the genre, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

 

Friedrich Cerha, like Anthony Payne, seems fated to be known first and foremost for his realisation of another composer’s work. And indeed, it is difficult not to think of Berg as a forerunner for much of Cerha’s music, these 1995 movements after Hölderlin included. There is nothing wrong with that; is it possible think of a better model or inspiration? And indeed, what we might consider to be the last gasps of expressionism keep on gasping. The first, slow movement, ‘Fair life! You lie sick, and my heart is/Tired from weeping, and fear is already dimming in me,’ came across as a slow processional, with some high-lying violin writing offering textural contrast.  After its Bergian melancholy, the second movement, responding to the third stanza of the Schicksalslied, as set by Brahms, offered highly rhythmical contrast, the general sense of unease exacerbated by passages of voluptuousness I am again tempted to call Bergian. Terse on the whole, it leads to a brief, inconclusive third-movement attempt to settle, which in turn seem – and certainly seemed, in this fine performance – to set the scene for the scurrying lines of the fourth movement, Presto misterioso. Its lightness registered as almost scherzo-like. ‘The lines of life are different,/Like paths, and like mountain ranges,/What we are here a god can fulfil/With harmonies and eternal joy and peace.’ That inspiration for the fifth movement fulfilled its promise as the beating heart of the work, its sweetness of harmony more than once reminiscent of Messiaen. A highly rhythmical contrast, echoing that between the first and second movements, was offered in the sixth: vehement, even furious at times. I should have defied anyone not to be impressed by the unanimity of ensemble, but such was the level of performance that this simply seemed to ‘be’ the work. Late-twentieth-century Brahms was one thought that came to mind. The slow, seventh movement proved richly expressive: mostly homophonic until a degree of unravelling, presaging what seemed like the new birth of the final movement, with its rapt scurrying. ‘The heart is awake again, but heartlessly/Immense night draws me always.’ If the words seemed almost to suggest Tristan, then the sense of hypnosis did not seem so very distant from Stockhausen.

 

gefährlich dünn (fragile pieces for double string quartet), by the Latvian composer, Jānis Petraškevičs, is the second piece he had written for the Ensemble Modern, following the 2012 Darkroom. It was definitely for double quartet rather than octet, the two quartets seated as such. Early, rapt – that word again – harmonies provoke intrusions and elicit blossoming of a kind, which does not seem entirely conciliatory. It is a work of considerable intensity and contrast, not least in the audible and visible contrast between those playing with and without vibrato; that intensity and contrast certainly registered strongly in this performance. Repetitions bring to our attention and perhaps also call into question the ‘fragility’ of the pieces, which, through their harmonics and quarter-tones, sing in a tradition of which Cerha and Berg may stand as forerunners.

 

Johannes Schöllhorn’s sous-bois (as in the French for ‘undergrowth’ or ‘forest floor’) also received its premiere. Is it perhaps an echo of Richard Dehmel’s poem for Schoenberg, and indeed Schoenberg’s response thereto? Here one was led to think that it might be. An arresting, swarming opening set up a contrast, even contest, with silence, employed not necessarily ‘like’ Bruckner or even Mahler, but nevertheless suggestive of the (Bavarian) Alps in which the composer was born. Indeed, more than once, I found myself considering this fascinating work in a post-Mahlerian context: doubtless partly a matter of personal preoccupation, but not, I think, entirely so. For the melancholy one felt was recognisably in such a mould too. There was always a discernible line, even if, at least on a first hearing, I might not be able to explain how. ‘Atmosphere’ there was aplenty, amongst the glissandi, the col legno playing, the tremolandi, the trills, and the other ‘effects’, but they never came across as anything but integral to this progress through the undergrowth, if that indeed be what it is. I should very much like to hear this work again. May we hope for a recording?

 

Finally, Verklärte Nacht. It had been but a fortnight earlier that I had heard members of the London Sinfonietta give a splendidly modernistic performance of this work at Kings Place. Perhaps inevitably, the programming and the nature of the ensemble tilted this performance also towards what was to come rather than the inheritance from Wagner and Brahms. Yet there was palpable sadness at the opening, in a performance which, like that of the Sinfonietta, gave a strong sense of the six players as individuals, as if members of a quartet. Vulnerable, even halting, this opening contrasted markedly – perhaps not unlike the Cerha movements – with the richness of what to come. Sometimes I longed for a little more expansiveness, but in retrospect I thought the players had been in the right. There were intriguing, far from arbitrary, moments of restraint too. Intonation was not always impeccable, but in context, I was far less distracted by that than I might have been expected; if anything, (relative) imperfection heightened the ‘edge’. And there was no doubting the silvery ‘transfiguration’, imbued with a more than usually powerful sense of musical return. For a performance that refused to treat this as ‘popularly acceptable’ or ‘accessible’, ‘late Romantic’ Schoenberg, we had good reason to be grateful.